Dr. Brian Ancell

Education

• B.S., Civil Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1998
• Ph.D. Atmospheric Science, University of Washington, Seattle, 2006

Research

• Numerical weather prediction
• Data Assimilation
• Severe storms
• Wind power forecasting
• Adjoint and ensemble forecast sensitivity

My research addresses the predictability of important and high-impact weather events on a wide range of scales. Currently I am focusing on dryline-induced severe convection, heavy rainfall from land-falling tropical cyclones, freezing and frozen precipitation events, and wind power in the South Plains of the United States. I use both ensemble and adjoint sensitivity analysis to investigate predictability, as well as ensemble data assimilation to estimate the effectiveness of routine and adaptive observations on these specific events. Other interests include developing forecast-based senstivity tools toward operational use at the National Weather Service, multi-scale data assimilation and modeling with an ensemble Kalman filter, and the impacts of human activities on synoptic- and mesoscale atmospheric flow.

Courses

• ATMO 1300 - Introduction to Atmospheric Science
• ATMO 3301 - General Meteorology
• GPH 5324 - Radiative Transfer
• ATMO 5332 - Regional-Scale Numerical Weather Prediction